


lest we sleep the sleep of death

by Ias



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Dominance, F/F, Masturbation, Possessive Behavior, Somnophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-26
Updated: 2015-11-26
Packaged: 2018-05-03 12:21:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5290595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Edith was alive. But she would not wake, not yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lest we sleep the sleep of death

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [my tumblr](http://curmudgeony.tumblr.com) for the prompt 'eyelid kiss'.

She lay as if dead. There was something that made a body a corpse, some fundamental quality that entered between the state of death and sleep. Lucille had seen it herself: she had leered into every facet of life and death she could gain a vantage point into. Edith was alive. But she would not wake, not yet. She was a doll, a puppet, awaiting the twitch of the strings that would send her dancing in a life that lasted only as long as Lucille willed it.  

Lucille drifted to the bedside. She was not sure what kept her here, what dark need drew her to lean over Edith in her pale, innocent night gown, gloating like a villain in one of the sleeping woman’s foolish stories. Yet here she was.

Experimentally, Lucille laid her gloved hand on Edith’s cheek. The woman did not so much as stir. Yet her flesh was soft and warm, practically glowing with a vitality that struggled against Lucille’s poison in her blood. She could feel it even through her glove. She took the glove off.

“Such a beauty,” she murmured now, and if her words penetrated Edith’s sleep she could not be sure. Perhaps a little frown dipped between her brows, a shadow passing through her dream. Lucille sat on the bed beside her and dragged her bare hand through the masses of hair that haloed around Edith’s head. So easy to imagine the snip, the braid, the red clay that would suck down these beastly tresses until they were matted beyond recognition or saving.

But Edith was not in the clay yet. She was here, with her soft hair that Lucille wound around her fist as if to tear it from her scalp. She buried her face in it instead, smelled the same soap that bathed Lucille’s body too, that the years had worked into every crevice of her. It was the smell of this house, sinking into Edith as eagerly as if she belonged here. The thought jarred. Lucille untangled her hand from Edith’s hair, distaste at her presence growing. Edith thought she belonged to Thomas. But Thomas belonged to Lucille, and therefore she owned Edith as securely as if she had married her herself. Edith just didn’t know it yet.

Unbidden, the thought of Thomas with his hands as Lucille’s had been leapt to mind, froze her in place. Had he sat as Lucille did now, in the bed they shared? Had he stared down at her sleeping form and admired the curve of her lips, the pertness of her nose?

She was not even aware that her hand had moved until she felt the sting of the slap on her palm, saw the redness blooming in Edith’s pretty cheek. Lucille was surprised at herself. She wanted to do it again. But Edith’s head lolled in her sleep, a pained murmur escaping her lips. Soon, the tea again. Lucille should fetch it now.

She was moving again, but not to get up and slide on her gloves and fetch the tray of tea. She climbed up onto the bed instead, straddling Edith’s waist. For a moment she was surprised at the softness beneath her, between her legs. She knew then that she would take Thomas just like this later tonight, pinning him and holding him like a beetle on a piece of cork.

“Is this how you want him, dear sister?” Lucille whispered. “To ride him as you please? Or perhaps, you’d rather be had.” Almost unbidden, she rocked her hips against Edith’s, the fabric of her dress a hindrance about her legs. Edith’s face remained smooth, undisturbed, lost in some peaceful dream. Lucille was almost surprised by the stuttering pleasure that grew between her legs. She had never done this before. She could not have explained what ‘this’ was, or why she did it. Only that the anger shooting through her was twined with something else, something that sent her hands wandering over Edith’s dress like pale spiders.

She slid her palms over Edith’s breasts, skimming past the neckline of her dress to run up the smooth column of her neck. She could feel the pulse beating there, slow and steady. She wrapped both her hands around it, gave an experimental squeeze: for only one moment the heart beat just a little faster. The sight of her hands around Edith’s throat drove something straight through her. Perhaps she would forgo the tea. Perhaps a more personal death was required here. She could kill Edith in this very bed, in this very position, but then her eyes would be open—open, so that Lucille could watch the life ebb from them in the last.  _Not yet, not yet, not yet._

She returned to Edith’s breasts. She squeezed them through the dress, raking with her nails at the nipples she could feel growing taut beneath the fabric. Always, she watched Edith’s face. She could almost pretend that the red blotch on the cheek she had slapped was the growing flush of passion. Lucille leaned forward and pressed her mouth to Edith’s breast, her tongue darting out until the cloth was damp beneath it. She tasted nothing but stale fabric and the ever-present bitter soap. Edith’s face twitched with some emotion buried beneath layers of sleep. Lucille wanted to claw after it, wanted Edith to wake up and come alive, for her hands to batter and flail or perhaps to pull her closer. Edith was hers. Not Thomas’s, no. Hers.

Lucille kissed her. She leaned in, slid her arm under the pillow, and pressed their lips together as hesitantly as any lover’s first fumbling. Edith’s mouth was motionless beneath hers, soft, pliant. She ran her tongue along the woman’s lower lip and felt a shiver run down her spine, settle in her loins. Only then did Lucille pull back. She was burning inside. She pressed the heel of her hand between her legs and for a moment it was Edith’s. The breath left her lungs, came rushing back in. She did not close her eyes. She wanted to watch Edith’s face. The woman's lips were half-open still, as if waiting for a kiss from a handsome prince to wake her from a sleep like death. 

“Such a pretty thing,” she gasped, rocking against herself and knowing it wasn’t enough. Edith’s body moved with the motion of hers, and for a moment she could pretend that it was Edith she was fucking, that Edith was fucking her, and she wanted to tear through Edith’s foolish nightgown and slide her fingers inside, to hook her like a fish through its gills, to show her the side of passion which shared its border with nightmare.

Edith stirred. Her eyelids twitched: a groan passed her lips, or perhaps a moan, some unconscious exhalation of sleep.

Lucille froze in place, her hand still pressed over the fabric between her thighs. She was torn by twin impulses: to leap away, to straighten Edith’s dress and hair, to set the tableau for Edith’s waking so that she would never know what had happened. Alternatively, she wanted to see the look on Edith’s face when she awoke with Lucille’s hands up her nightgown, halfway to her end before her eyes had even opened. Her hips gave another helpless lurch at the thought, the breath hissing past her teeth. Let sweet little Edith explain that to Thomas.

But there was no time for such a thing now. For Edith was drawing closer to waking with every second, her lips moving soundlessly, her head rolling in sleep. Lucille lingered a moment longer, breathless, staring down at the prize Thomas had snared for her. Edith’s eyes cracked halfway open, seeing Lucille without seeing, the veil of sleep still thick.

Lucille leaned in one last time, quieted Edith’s restless half-slumber with a soothing hand on her brow. “You’re dreaming,” she murmured. “Go back to sleep.” Edith stared at her a moment longer, like a lost child staring up from the bottom of a dry well. Then the bright slivers of her eyes disappeared behind their lids, and Lucille leaned in to seal them closed with a kiss on each. She could feel the delicate fluttering of Edith’s eyes beneath the skin, and thought briefly of taking the lid in her teeth and tearing. She settled for brushing her lips over the tender barbs of Edith’s eyelashes instead.

“I won’t be gone long,” Lucille promised as she slid off of the bed. She straightened Edith’s dress, combed her fingers through that long golden hair, and finally replaced her gloves. They felt false on her skin, as if they were holding something unsavory closer to her.

She would go make the tea. And in the future the dose would increase, and Edith would not wake so easily. But she would wake. For a while longer, she would wake—and Lucille would be waiting for her.


End file.
